Re-photo

It’s stating the obvious to say that the eyes are the most important part of any portrait, though like all such ‘rules’ there are brilliant examples to show it untrue. But it remains a good working basis – and we can’t be brilliant all the time :-), and making the kind of run-of-the-mill images of people that I do, particularly of the speakers at protests such as the Stand Up to Racism Rally certainly the first rule is to look at the eyes – and to focus on them.

Some people blink more than others, and some often speak, especially in bright sun, with their eyes closed.  Others, particularly those who read their speeches or have copious notes, spend much of their time looking down. It’s often a matter of watching them and catching the moment when they do look up, sometimes fleetingly.

I usually, but not always, photograph with my right eye. When others photograph me at work, my left eye is often screwed tight shut as I concentrate on the viewfinder with the other. But while photographing people speaking, especially when using a DSLR where only the actual image area is seen in the viewfinder, I usually keep that left eye open, so I can see the speaker as a whole. It makes it easier to catch gestures, and easier to anticipate when people might look up and open their eyes. Using the 18-105mm DX lens on the FX D800E  when you see a considerable area outside the image frame is also a help.

One great help on all digital cameras is the ability to see immediately if you have taken a picture with the subject’s eyes open. Even those with the steadiest of gazes do occasionally blink, and sometimes cameras seem to have a built in capacity to capture this. On the Nikon D700 I use Custom setting f2 to set the ‘Multi Selector Center Button’ in Playback Mode to Zoom on, High Magnification. If you have taken a picture focussing on the eyes, a simple press will show a highly magnified image centred on the focus area.

I seldom ‘chimp’ when working – for me it disrupts the flow of my work. Sometimes I find I’ve worked a whole day without looking at an image on the camera back, occasionally with unfortunate results. But photographing speakers is a something I make an exception for, checking regularly to see if I those eyes were open, as well as for the gestures and expressions I had hoped to catch. Unlike much of what I do, it is worth checking because if you have missed what you were trying to photograph, people usually repeat similar gestures and characteristic expressions.

Eyes are also often in shadow, set into the face below the forehead. With people who wear hats the problem is often worse.  Mentally we compensate for this and usually fail to notice what the camera faithfully records.  Back in the black and white darkroom days we did it with waving small cards or lumps of Blutak on thin wires above the print, or sometimes with a little ferricyanide bleach and other tricks.

I’m not sure if Reuters or the World Press Photo would approve, but I often find a little extra brightness and contrast with the Adjustment Brush in Lightroom (and sometimes some of that mysterious clarity) produces an image that seems more true to life. Occasionally it’s something I overdo.

Looking through my images from the Stand Up to Racism Rally it is the eyes that stand out, rather more than usual in my sets of pictures. But even in other sets, such as the images in Britain First Protests anti-Racist March the eyes are important, and I think play an important part  in how we read the images of these racists in their forest of Union flags. Somehow it seemed appropriate that they were standing in front of Lilywhites.

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How do I – and other photographers – decide what to photograph? It’s a question I often ask myself when covering events, and although there is no list of rules, there are certainly some things that I bear in mind.

Foremost is that I will only photograph things that interest me. I’m in the fortunate position never to have to take a photograph simply because I think it will sell.

Not that I’m rich and don’t need money, but in the past I earned enough to live on from teaching and now I could get by on my pension (and my wife’s) and my needs are relatively small, having long since paid off my mortgage.  So I don’t need to cover the kind of events – or take the kind of pictures – that are most likely to sell. I’m happy to leave those to colleagues who might enjoy them more and who need the money more than me.

This affects both which events I chose to attend, and also often the type of pictures that I take.  Although I’ve taken some reasonable images of fairly well-known people that have been published, I don’t go out of my way to photograph celebrities. There are quite a few I don’t recognise in any case, and when I’m standing around talking with other photographers and they name one, I’ve often never heard of them.

At protests, there are some people who stand out for various reasons. Turquoise hair might well be one of them, but for me it’s important to relate them to the event. I would have been happier with the image above if I could read more of the placard the woman in it was holding.

Having taken the first image using a short telephoto (99mm equiv) from a little distance through a crowd I realised immediately it wasn’t quite what I wanted. Although I don’t pose people, I often like them to be aware that I’m taking their picture and with the 16mm I was quite close, and they have posed for me, with two placards that clearly spell out the main issues of the protest.

I could perhaps have framed a little more tightly, but I liked having a recognisable part of All Souls Langham Place in the background, a church with close connections to the neighbouring BBC, though how many people would recognise it is perhaps debatable.

As well as taking pictures that relate to the event, its also important to me to try and give a fair and accurate representation of the event. Although it’s usually important to photograph what is at the front of a march, I always try to work my way through the whole of it (though a few are too large to allow this.)

I seldom photograph banners and groups head on from the centre. I find such pictures rather boring, and always prefer to work from some way to the side unless there is a good reason to do otherwise. I’d also prefer the people to be actually marching, but sometimes this isn’t possible – and here they are standing still. I wanted to get the iconic Broadcasting House in the background, and would have liked to take this picture from rather further back with a longer lens to make it seem larger, but unfortunately there were probably at least 50 people taking pictures in the way.

Unfortunately the stewarding on many marches make it difficult to photograph the front of the march once it is moving, but things are usually easier a little way back. Though if a march is tightly packed it is often hard to get enough clear space to photograph banners. Again an approach from the side is usually easier, though it may make it hard to read the banners.

The start of the march is a ‘key moment’ and one I usually try to photograph along with other key moments in the event. There is I think an important difference between key moments and the kind of pictures that make the news; key moments are those that tell the story, while news images are often quite peripheral. Five thousand people may march peacefully but if one idiot attacks a policeman, for most newspapers that is the story and the picture they want. If I see something sensational in this way I’ll usually photograph it, but that isn’t what I’m looking for (and sometimes I have decided not to photograph such things or not to file them where I felt they misrepresented the event.)

This event was called ‘Stand Up To Racism’ and for me it was important to show the wide range of people taking part, including many from London’s many ethnic communities. As well as those key moments I’m also trying to build up a picture of the event, to tell its story.

Part of that story is the people who are taking part, and I try to show the whole range, though those that look in some way more interesting in some way are more likely to appear in my pictures. As too are any well-known people taking part, who in this case included Peter Tatchell and several others.

And for many events, placards, posters and banners are vital, and it’s important to frame them so that they are legible. Occasionally I’ll deliberately cut one off part way across, though if so I try to leave enough to make it possible for the reader to work out the text. More often I’ll carefully position the frame and zoom to leave them ending close to the edges – as in the image of Peter Tatchell.

Apologies for rambling on, partly because I wrote this over a busy couple of days. But as you look at the pictures in Stand Up to Racism March I hope it helps to make clear why I took them as they are.

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